It’s half-past four in the morning and here I am, starting a blog post about the emotions TV shows can make me feel. But I really want to write this post now.
See, I’ve been watching TV shows and movies since I was a kid, and it became a ritual to rent a DVD, buy a tub of salted popcorn and a packet of Maltesers and watch that DVD in the “green room” with my sister. The green room was small with a TV, bed that we used as a couch, bookshelf for DVDs and a cupboard full of games.
In that room, I fell in love with Buffy, cried when she lost Angel time and time again, gasped at the drama in Desperate Housewives and stayed up late watching horror movies on Friday nights.
Buffy is a TV show that means a lot to me and I’ve already mentioned on this blog that it is the reason I’m writing Playing with Darts: I want to make readers feel what I felt while watching Buffy. I want readers to fall in love with my characters, laugh at the horrible things that happen because, like my mother once said (I think), sometimes you just have to laugh at the situation you’re in.
I want readers to root for the characters and want them to kill the Big Bad. I want readers to cry when characters die and rejoice when people are reunited.
Oddly enough, what inspired this post is Charmed. Charmed has also made me feel the same things as Buffy. Don’t even get me started on the whole Piper/Leo drama.
BUT I want to talk about Piper and Mark, the ghost from season 1.
Summary of the episode: Tony Wong, a criminal, kills Mark, on his birthday no less, and uses his body to fake his own death. Mark is overjoyed when he finds out that Piper and Phoebe, two witches, can see him. He needs his body to be buried or else Yama will take his soul to hell, even though he’s good. Piper, once she’s convinced he’s a ghost, decides to help him.
I’d only seen that episode once, and rewatching it today was like watching it for the first time. And I was amazed at how the writers and actors and actresses got us caring so much for Piper and Mark in just 40 minutes.
Even just thinking about it now is making me tear up.
I hate and love the creators of those TV shows because they’re so cruel when it comes to our feelings, but I aspire to do the same thing to my readers one day.
Because if a story doesn’t make you feel something–whether that something is anger, fear, happiness, sorrow or love–then what good is it?
See, I’ve been watching TV shows and movies since I was a kid, and it became a ritual to rent a DVD, buy a tub of salted popcorn and a packet of Maltesers and watch that DVD in the “green room” with my sister. The green room was small with a TV, bed that we used as a couch, bookshelf for DVDs and a cupboard full of games.
In that room, I fell in love with Buffy, cried when she lost Angel time and time again, gasped at the drama in Desperate Housewives and stayed up late watching horror movies on Friday nights.
Buffy is a TV show that means a lot to me and I’ve already mentioned on this blog that it is the reason I’m writing Playing with Darts: I want to make readers feel what I felt while watching Buffy. I want readers to fall in love with my characters, laugh at the horrible things that happen because, like my mother once said (I think), sometimes you just have to laugh at the situation you’re in.
I want readers to root for the characters and want them to kill the Big Bad. I want readers to cry when characters die and rejoice when people are reunited.
Oddly enough, what inspired this post is Charmed. Charmed has also made me feel the same things as Buffy. Don’t even get me started on the whole Piper/Leo drama.
BUT I want to talk about Piper and Mark, the ghost from season 1.
Summary of the episode: Tony Wong, a criminal, kills Mark, on his birthday no less, and uses his body to fake his own death. Mark is overjoyed when he finds out that Piper and Phoebe, two witches, can see him. He needs his body to be buried or else Yama will take his soul to hell, even though he’s good. Piper, once she’s convinced he’s a ghost, decides to help him.
I’d only seen that episode once, and rewatching it today was like watching it for the first time. And I was amazed at how the writers and actors and actresses got us caring so much for Piper and Mark in just 40 minutes.
Even just thinking about it now is making me tear up.
I hate and love the creators of those TV shows because they’re so cruel when it comes to our feelings, but I aspire to do the same thing to my readers one day.
Because if a story doesn’t make you feel something–whether that something is anger, fear, happiness, sorrow or love–then what good is it?
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
-Elizabeth Drew
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